


the sound of you and i die young.

by sleepywoods



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-03
Updated: 2014-04-03
Packaged: 2018-01-18 00:35:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1408447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleepywoods/pseuds/sleepywoods
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wendy Darling is a storyteller, and this is not how she wanted it to end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the sound of you and i die young.

**Author's Note:**

> recommended listening --   
>  fire rides: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xkgor-j0IIs  
>  together: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti29LJxvdw8

One hundred years.  _One century_ , over fifteen years more than the average lifespan of a human being. Her father, may he rest in peace, had been right all those years ago — Wendy should have grown up. Shouldn’t have tried to force a life of adventure upon herself, because it’s only when the happiness wears itself out after reuniting with her brothers that the melancholy finally catches up.

 

In the darkness and loneliness of her nursery, her mind is only of the days prior to her descent into Neverland.

 

Back then, Wendy was a storyteller. The nursery had been their idea of what Neverland should have been. If Wendy were to say they were sailors in search of a new land, the beds would be their ships and her brothers would play the roles of captain and lieutenant. If she were to declare the next day that they were Native Americans defending their land from other tribes, the floors would become the battlefield while John and Michael sparred one another while she narrated and improvised all the way until the battle ended. She had more adventures inside the safety and comfort of their nursery in the fourteen years of her life, in the ten years of John’s and four of Michael’s than the hundred years she’d spent in Neverland.

 

And John and Michael, once so young, now towers over her and thinks nothing of the loss time and growth she’d missed, leaves it to her to deliberate on her own and it  _eats_ at her. John and Michael, who once slept inside the same nursery, are now too old to remain in the same room as her. John and Michael, once too young to think for themselves, now must guide her through the daily life of the modern world.

 

Wendy is a storyteller, and she’s missed a century of stories to tell, of history to recall, of  _l_ _ove_  she thought she’d experienced. And perhaps it wouldn’t be as painful if her brothers hadn’t grown. Those years, Wendy can’t possibly make up for. The nursery — the world she belongs in — is a different kind of prison, now. When the only thought the walls, the sheets and toys can manifest are the ones of the past, Wendy feels bound by it.

 

And now, Peter Pan is gone — he pays in the price of a lifetime sentence inside the box that she once thought only existed in myths. Neverland should be safe now, with Peter gone. It should revert back to the place for dreamers by dreamers. She’s visited once in her dreams, a second time when her feet touched the sands and —  _oh, Heaven and stars_  — she actually felt it. The third time, the should-be last time, she spent the majority of her time confined, her voice never travelled far, and Peter — no matter how far he was, Wendy always felt him nearby, watching and waiting for a  _reason_. For what?

 

That should have been the last time she visited the island, but she dreads having to leave it the way she had — nothing has resolved. Not with Felix, still so blindly faithful. Not with the remaining lost boys, who are now without families — and  _no_ , she doesn’t believe for a moment that the Princess, the Savior or the Queen would truly provide the boys familial love when they left the Jolly Roger. It’d taken her everything not to roll her eyes when the boys agreed — young hearts like theirs (like hers) are so easily drawn to false pretenses of love, but that’s what Peter has done to them all. And, least of all, not with Peter Pan, who she never even had the chance to say a goodbye, say  _something_. She wanted him to feel something, that perhaps there was a part of him that felt remorse for all the pain he’s caused everything he’s ever crossed paths with.

 

Wendy is a storyteller; this  _s_ _hould_  be a happy ending, at the very least for  _her_. Because she’s reunited with John and Michael, but still — there’s a lingering feeling of emptiness in her heart.

 

Wendy is a storyteller, but the only stories she can tell now are those that broke her. This is not how her story should end.

 

So when Wendy sleeps that night, she thinks not of John or Michael, that they’ve grown up without her. Not of her own youth and that, given another decade, she’ll join them too — that time moves far too quickly in the real world for her to get accustomed to.

 

Wendy is a storyteller, and she wants to tell himself a lovely story for once. She wants to see how it ends, wants to create a  _better_  ending. Closing her eyes, pulls the cover over her arms and shoulders, shifting quietly on her bed.

 

“ _Think lovely thoughts_ ,” she whispers.

 

This will be her last visit.

 

———

 

Neverland doesn’t change much in the twelve or so hours they’d left its shores, not visually, at the very least. The moon still hangs over the peaks, contouring the rocks and trees and sparkling the sands beneath her. But that is also what makes the island so unusual to her — she’d only seen the land from within the cage,  _from the inside looking out_ , not like this. It’s as beautiful as she remembers it the first time, and now, she feels no eyes upon her, no watchful aura of its veritable King.

 

Peter really is gone.

 

“You came back,” a familiar voice says from behind her, and she nearly tumbles forward, jumping right out of her skin. Wendy turns already quickly, biting her bright red lips as she takes a step back. “Don’t look so terrified. You and I both know you’re safe from my clutches,” Peter assures.

 

But Wendy is anything by relaxed — she doesn’t trust that she can be completely safe, glaring straight into his eyes with more strength and bravery than she ever felt in all the time she’d spent with him. “With you, I can never be too sure,” comes her forcedly stern reply.

 

Peter’s response is a scoff, unreadable — because, she thinks, he doesn’t know if she means it as an insult or a compliment. Perhaps it’s a little bit of both. “Why did you come back?” he asks, taking steps closer. For the first time  _since_  her very first nice, she sees the face of a boy, not demon.

 

“I —” Wendy starts, and there’s no storyteller in her right now that can complete the thought at that very moment, not when Peter shows no sign that he means to stop until he’s directly before him. Where he can scrutinize her every expression, her words — she is a storyteller, but Peter romanticizes far better. That is how he’d fooled her, the lost boys,  _Felix_ , and Henry. “I wanted to see how this story ends,” she admits, craning her head slightly to avoid his gaze.

 

She doesn’t have to look at him to see the twitch in his brows — he’s always spoken more with them — his confusion apparent when he peers down at her. “Thought you already had the ending you desired. A happy family reunion between the Darling siblings. That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it?”

 

She perks at that, feels her eyes well up and she can’t possibly imagine why.

 

“It is!” Wendy protests; it has been for over a century (still fifteen years more than the average human life, she remembers again). “But this is not how it should end  _for you_. For Neverland.”

 

_Sympathy for the devil is a dangerous game she_ shouldn’t  _be playing._

 

“And  _how_  —” Peter’s suddenly too close, speaks in a low whisper only for her to hear, “Would you rewrite this story, Wendy?”

 

Wendy inhales sharply, taking a step back. She can’t let him distract her, and she balls her hands into a fist, setting her jaws for a moment before she chins up, looking as strong as she possibly can. She is a visitor of her dreams — he can’t keep her here. He  _can’t_  harm her when he’s already lost.

 

“I would give you a true love,” she says at last.

 

His laugher is nothing short of mocking. “And what makes you think I’m capable of such a thing?”

 

Wendy doesn’t want to smile at him, after all he’s done to her, but she can’t help a small, wry one. Her hands relax. One century of living in Neverland, and it was perhaps the first time she believed him _truly_  as a boy. “Everyone is, Peter. Even you.”

 

Blink and she misses the precise moment he closes the gap between the two of them once again, hand on her cheek, but she doesn’t pull away. Just stares up into his eyes, and because it appears to be a time for firsts, she sees now the genuinity she never thought him capable of. Even him.

 

“Are you volunteering yourself, Wendy?”

 

No, she wants to say. She may have believed she can change him, once. She might have believed she could  _love_  him, once, but that is another tragedy she doesn’t want to speak of. It seems so easy to say it in her mind — here, with him so close. The words that can quickly end this catch in her throat and refuses to come out, leaving her lips parted and head canted toward the boy.

 

Peter sees it as an invitation and cranes down. If eyes alone can love, which Wendy has never experienced in her unfortunately long life, she would believe this the precise moment he had learned to love  _something_.

 

His lips ghost over hers — she expects him to steal her very first kiss, her very first, genuine kiss, that perhaps can break any curse, especially his curse of utter cruelty  —

 

“ _Wake up, Wendy_.”

 

———

 

The sound of a ringing device — a cellphone, John calls it — wakes her.

 

She reaches over to the nightstand, rubbing her eyes awake, her visit still lingering in her memory, heart still beating fast and she swears she tastes someone on her lips. It was a text that makes her heart stop, skin cold and leaving her speechless.

 

_Pan is dead. Gone for good. You’re safe now, I promise._

  
Wendy Darling is a storyteller, and this is not how she wanted it to end.


End file.
